This is a chilling decision -- and yes, sick
too. No doubt, this outrageous sentence of an elder attorney with cancer
is designed to send a message to all attorneys: Be careful who you
represent. IMHO, it helps make the case for abandoning this "last bastion
of fascism" -- the courtroom. Just as the electoral system is rigged
against us, so is the system of injustice. Perhaps it's time for us to
boycott the whole damn thing.

NEW YORK ­ A judge had resentenced a 70-year-old civil rights lawyer to 10
years in prison for letting a jailed Egyptian sheik communicate with his
radical followers.

Federal Judge John Koeltl sentenced Lynne Stewart in Manhattan after she
pleaded with him to reimpose the two-year, four-month sentence he had
originally given her in 2006. She said she has been diminished since her
November imprisonment.

An appeals court had ordered a new sentencing, saying the judge needed to
consider whether she committed perjury. Koeltl says she did and he says she
lacked remorse after her first sentencing.

Prosecutors had asked the judge to impose a sentence of at least 15 years.